Judi Warren Blaydon

Judi Warren Blaydon grew up observing that almost the only days her grandmother's dining room table was not covered by a quilt-in-progress were Thanksgiving and Christmas. She also learned that fabric was a more valuable commodity than a fur coat and that heirloom family quilts were to be treated as treasures. Judi began as a painter, making large acrylic paintings about quilts. It was that same grandmother who said, "If you love them so much, why don't you make a real one?"

With a background in art education, Judi began teaching The Great American Quilt class in the School of Design Adult Program at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio in 1976. She currently lectures, judges, and teaches for conferences and guilds in the United States, Switzerland, and Japan.

Judi's Master of Fine Arts degree was perhaps one of the earliest in which the major media was quilts. Her work has been shown at the New England Quilt Museum, at Quilt National and Crafts National exhibitions, and represented in public and private collections in the United States, Australia, and Japan. Her quilts are in 28 books, including Nihon Vogue's 88 Leaders in the Quilt World Today and Robert Shaw's The Art Quilt. Her quilt The Mountain and the Magic: Night Lights is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the American Quilter's Society in Paducah, Kentucky.

Judi and her husband, Frank, live in Milford, Michigan, where Judi makes her quilts and where her flower garden is primarily a salad bar enjoyed by deer and rabbits. Judi will be happy to schedule a Collage+Cloth=Quilt workshop for your group. Contact her at blay555 at yahoo dot com for information about her lectures and workshops.